An open collection of baseball's little-known records and curiosities.

"He would have been among the league leaders in batting average for a majority of the season had he had enough plate appearances." -- 2008 St. Louis Cardinals Media Guide about non-roster invitee Mark Johnson

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Most Expensive Bullpens on Opening Day 2008

Okay, so this post is a week late, two days late, one day late, or (thanks to weather) right on time, depending on your favorite team's schedule. One of the most important parts of a team's composition is the bullpen. The average starter in the major leagues last season lasted about 5 2/3 innings per game, leaving 3 1/3 innings for his team's pen. Those ten outs per game (sometimes seven, occasionally more) can spell success or failure for a team's season. Some teams prefer to look for cheap arms to fling against the wall to see who sticks while others prefer to splurge on the free agent market to acquire arms to staff the pen.

What I want to do here is find the bullpens that are drawing the highest combined salary for this season. I've used the depth charts on mlb.com in combination with the active rosters on mlb.com to figure out each team's bullpen as best I can. Further, I've checked injury reports to include players that, if healthy, would be in their team's bullpen (B.J. Ryan, Mike Timlin, etc.).

For salaries, I used the excellent Cot's Baseball Contracts and assumed players without salary data (usually rookies or other young players) are making $400,000 this year. I know the major league minimum is actually $390k this season, but most teams kick in bonuses to their players, so $400k seems fair as a ballpark estimate.

2008 Opening Day Bullpens by Total Salary (in millions of dollars)

Milwaukee Brewers, 26.850

New York Yankees, 26.175

Los Angeles Angels, 22.100

New York Mets, 20.775

Philadelphia Phillies, 17.950

Chicago Cubs, 17.560

Minnesota Twins, 17.525

St. Louis Cardinals, 17.350

Cincinnati Reds, 16.375

Colorado Rockies, 15.774

Toronto Blue Jays, 15.615

Tampa Bay Rays, 13.858

Chicago White Sox, 13.175

Washington Nationals, 12.450

Detroit Tigers, 11.875

Houston Astros, 11.025

San Diego Padres, 10.970

Boston Red Sox, 10.936

Baltimore Orioles, 10.660

Cleveland Indians, 10.650

Oakland Athletics, 10.100

Kansas City Royals, 9.041

Arizona Diamondbacks, 7.975

Texas Rangers, 7.592

Los Angeles Dodgers, 6.240

Atlanta Braves, 6.000

Pittsburgh Pirates, 5.535

Seattle Mariners, 5.400

Florida Marlins, 5.228

San Francisco Giants, 5.188

Here are the members of the most expensive and least expensive bullpens:

It's interesting that the Brewers' bullpen costs almost as much as the bottom six teams on the list combined. I was also surprised how highly Tampa Bay is on the list; I know they don't have the lowest payroll in the league anymore, but I didn't expect to see their bullpen in the upper half.